Usually, a person needing to wear spectacles and having thus a prescription filled by an ophthalmologist or by another authorized eye care professional goes to the premise of an optician for choosing the frame of the future spectacles and to order the ophthalmic lenses. The future wearer of the spectacles may try several spectacle frames and finally choose one of the tried frames. The optician sends an order to a lens provider so as to have the lenses provided to him.
The lens provider has different manufacturing technique available so as to manufacture a lens corresponding to the prescription of the wearer.
For example, lenses are commonly manufactured by using a limited number of semi-finished lens blanks. The front face of a semi-finished lens blank is usually intended to be the final front surface of the final lens and the other face is machined so as the optical system of the final lens fits the wearer ophthalmic prescriptions.
According to such manufacturing technique the lens provider determines the most appropriate semi-finished lens blank and the most appropriate design for the rear face of the lens so as to fit the wearer ophthalmic prescription.
Once the lens provider has determine the most appropriate semi-finished lens blank and design, the lens provider according to the type of manufacturing equipment generates manufacturing parameters that correspond to said semi-finished lens blank and said design.
The manufacturing parameters are then sent to the different manufacturing entities and the semi-finished lens blank is manufactured according to said manufacturing parameters.
The manufactured lens may be sent as such to the optician or if the optician has provided geometrical parameters of the spectacle frame chosen by the wearer, the lens provider may, for example, edge the manufactured lens and provide to the optician edged lenses.
The lens provider may have a plurality of manufacturing labs in different region or states and the optician's order may be forwarded to any of those lab, for example according to the work load of each lab or any other criteria. For example, each lab may be specialized in a type of lens design and therefore according to the type of lens the optician's order may be forwarded to a lab or another.
The lens provider may also need to contract out some of the lens orders for example to face overloads. The lens provider may also work with licensed labs that may work for different lens providers.
When a lens provider has different labs or works with external labs, the lens provider needs to either provide to each lab the manufacturing parameter or provide processing means arranged for processing the order request on the basis of predetermined processing rules so as to obtain manufacturing parameters of the ophthalmic lens according to the information comprised in the order request.
Most of the lens providers prefer to simply forward the optician's order request to the lab and have the lab determine the manufacturing parameters.
According to such configuration, the lens provider provides the different labs with processing means required to determine the most accurate manufacturing parameters according to the information comprised in the optician's order request.
The present invention aims at improving the present situation.